FALKENBURG

NAME: FALKENBURG COUNTY: Muskoka ROADS: 2WD GRID: CLIMATE: Snow in winter BEST TIME TO VISIT: Spring summer or fall

COMMENTS: REMAINS: The cemetery now stands without its church and the post office stands alone in the woods.

North of southern Ontario’s mill towns was a remote wilderness called Muskoka thick with pine trees and unexplored. Lumber interests were anxious to harvest the timber but there were no permanent inhabitants to draw upon. Starting in the 1850s the lumber interests and the provincial government devised a plan to encourage settlement of the region. For anyone willing to build a cabin and clear a few acres the land along them would be free. Lured by free land, settlers soon followed. Towns appeared at waterpower sites, around the stopping places and at convenient crossroad locations. One was Falkenburg. In 1863 a post office opened. There were several hotels, a blacksmith shop, an Anglican Church and a school. When the Northern and Pacific Junction railway came through a few years later it built its station two miles south, where a new village, Falkenburg Station, grew up. It became the center of the area and Falkenburg became a ghost town.

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